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Esperion Therapeutics Inc., a Plymouth Township-based early-stage pharmaceutical company, is planning a secondary public offering late this year or early next, based in part on results of a 60-patient trial it announced earlier this month.

Esperion (Nasdaq: ESPR) raised about $73 million in its initial public offering last June 26.

The secondary offering may also be helped along by what have been very strong reports and buy ratings by the four analysts who cover the company. Following news of the trial results, all issued reports this month predicted the stock to double or more in the next 12 months. The stock was trading at $15.31 Thursday afternoon.

Esperion will move its headquarters next month out of the Michigan Life Science and Innovation Center, an incubator facility run by the Michigan Economic Development Corp., to larger space in Ann Arbor. It will retain lab space at the incubator.

"This will be a pivotal year for us," said Tim Mayleben, president and CEO.

The June IPO was the second IPO for a drug company called Esperion. The first was founded in 1998 to create a drug to raise HDL, the so-called good cholesterol. It went public in 2000 and was sold to Pfizer Inc. for $1.3 billion in 2004.

In 2008, as part of closing its Michigan operations, Pfizer sold the name and rights to some small molecules back to company co-founder Roger Newton, who founded the second Esperion and is now its chief science officer.

This Esperion is conducting human trials on a small-molecule drug with the working name of ETC-1002, which lowers LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, in people who are intolerant to a class of drugs called statins, such as Lipitor and Torvast, which are currently the drugs of choice to lower LDL.

Researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, who conducted the Phase 2a study of ETC-1002 in 60 statin-intolerant patients, published their results in the March issue of the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.

Editors felt the results warranted an accompanying editorial. It said the results demonstrated "several results worthy of comment," foremost that study subjects showed a 43 percent decline in LDL levels without any change in levels of HDL and with minimal side effects.

"This degree of LDL reduction is impressive, approaching the effect of high-intensity statin therapy," said the editorial.

On March 5, Esperion reported earnings for the quarter that ended Dec. 31. It had a net loss of $9.7 million for the fourth quarter and a loss of $26.1 million for the year, compared to a net loss of $2.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2012 and of $11.7 million in 2012.

Analysts responded with praise. The losses were expected, since Esperion doesn't generate revenue and had higher trials costs in 2013.

What they responded to were the trial results Esperion discussed in the conference call, as well as to news of its plans for larger Phase 2b trials this year. The company is enrolling 320 statin-intolerant patients for one trial and 130 patients in another trial for those who can tolerate some statins but not enough to lower their LDL sufficiently.

Mayleben expects results to be back early in the fourth quarter. If they mimic the recent results, "we'll want to raise more capital," he said, declining to name an amount. "We want to raise money, but you don't want to dilute your current investors too much."

He said the secondary offering will fund much-larger Phase 3 studies, involving up to 3,000 patients, in 2015.

Based on similar news he told analysts, they subsequently wrote:

• "We remain buyers of ESPR, remaining among our top picks in our small-cap biotech coverage," said New York City-based Citi Research's report, which had a 12-month target for the share price of $30. "ESPR's novel oral cholesterol-lowering drug has several paths to becoming a blockbuster drug in this large and growing cholesterol market."

• New York City-based JMP Securities said it expected a "data-rich 2014" from the company and gave it a target price of $34. "We remain buyers of the stock," said its report.

• Baltimore-based Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. issued a report with a target price of $29 and said: "We anticipate that the combination of positive Phase 2b test results will provide definitive proof that ETC-1002 is a highly differentiated compound for the treatment of LDL."

• New York City-based Credit Suisse had a target price of $26. "Our positive view on ESPR is based on the large market opportunity and significant scarcity value of its novel oral pill for lowering cholesterol," said its report.